


saudade

by amainiris



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 13:33:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20359336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amainiris/pseuds/amainiris
Summary: (n): a deep emotional state of melancholic longing for an absent person or creature that one loves. in most cases, the object of longing will never return.When her father sends her direwolf’s bones north, Sansa wants nothing more than for her own bones to go with them.





	saudade

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick sketch. Written because I always wondered what it was like, for Sansa to lose her wolf.
> 
> This is an old work, so not the best-written, but I like it enough to post it again.

* * *

When her father sends her direwolf’s bones north, Sansa wants nothing more than for her own bones to go with them.

He doesn’t know, of course. He doesn’t know that she hid behind a rough-skinned oak tree and watched him do it. He doesn’t know how she had to choke back an agonized cry when Ice came swinging down on her direwolf’s willing neck. He doesn’t know that when he split open Lady to the bone, he cut deep a part of Sansa, too.

It is a peculiar feeling, to not be whole. And Sansa is beginning to think that she is coming to understand a little bit of life in the process: it is not the world’s kindness nor its cruelty that terrifies her, but its indifference. The guilty rise by sin and the innocent—oh, she thinks, _Lady_—fall by virtue. Her direwolf—dainty-pawed and dainty-stepped, with those brilliant yellow eyes like bold copper. When Sansa remembers her clearly, the way she’d nuzzle into her hand and gaze boldly into Sansa’s sun-lit blue eyes, the tears begin to ache at the back of her eyelids and do not find release until Sansa rushes to a hidden glen, a sheltered wagon, and sobs until her eyes are as red as blood and the sunrise both.

“The Lannister woman will never have this skin,” her father promises her, and Sansa wants to snap at him, to scream, that it doesn’t matter, and doesn’t he see? Lady is gone, and with her went a piece of Sansa, leaving only a ghost limb that will ache like an open wound until she finds herself under blade or axe or sword. Because that would be appropriate, wouldn’t it? For girl and wolf to meet the same fate, twined together in death as they were in life?

She hides her feelings impressively well, all considered. She snaps at Arya once or twice, resentful beyond resentment that her sister still has a wolf, that she is still whole. Lady was Nymeria’s sacrifice, and this is something, she believes, that she will never be able to forgive. But it’s more than that, she acknowledges. Some griefs run deeper than anger.

Sansa still remembers the first time she saw her: golden-eyed and grey-furred, fine-boned and sweet-tempered, a tangled playful mess of fur. When she’d picked her up, the direwolf pup had looked right into her eyes, unblinking, and then she’d licked Sansa’s cheek. _Lady_, Sansa remembers thinking, the joy now all but stolen by grief. _Lady_. The perfect name for the perfect wolf.

The day the men prepare to take her North, Sansa requests to see her body. At first her father refuses, noting the blood-spattered fur, the deep-cut neck. But Sansa persists until at last he gives in, and for once heedless of her dress she kneels beside her precious, dead direwolf. She knows, innately, that it is like falling in love; this will not happen again. She will never have another.

And she doesn’t even know why she cries: if it’s for everything, or for nothing.

Later they tell her that she is buried in the lichyard of Winterfell, underneath a solid smooth stone. Radiant Lady, innocent of any crime but trust, buried in a modest grave underneath the mottled earth. Sansa wonders if she is finally at rest, in the hills where she belongs. She wonders if the ghost pulse she sometimes feels at the base of her neck is Lady within her still, or if she is just being a stupid, dream-enamored child. She wants to know if a dead wolf could have a heartbeat, and if it could ring inside of her.

And at the same time, she wonders what could possibly be left behind: because if beauty and sweetness and gentleness fade, will only her bones remain?


End file.
